More people than ever are at UF Health Jacksonville with COVID-19, according to their disaster medical officer.
But even with more people in hospitals, beds filling up isn't what doctors are concerned about right now. Their concerns are about running out of the people caring for patients in those beds and running out of personal protective equipment (PPE).
"It's not necessarily a space within the wall issue," said Dr. David Caro, a disaster medical officer for UF Health Jacksonville. "We've got space within the walls. The issue is making sure that we have enough staffing and that's where we're getting stretched."
Caro says they had 83 COVID-19 patients Thursday. Twenty-five were in the ICU, according to the media relations specialist.
Caro says even though most people infected now are younger, the number of people who will need to be hospitalized will still go up because the number of positive cases and percent of positive cases are climbing.
"As the population gets infected there will be a percentage of our staff that get infected and also have to go out on quarantine," Caro said. "So we're having to juggle those kinds of things and still make sure that we're keeping everybody safe."
Caro they're having "gigantic" meetings every morning to make sure they have the PPE they need.
"Especially when you look at the intensive care unit and those patients," Caro began. "While they're a smaller number of folks, they require a lot more support so you have multiple people having to go in and out of those rooms."
He says he'd like to be able to change masks between every patient, but that isn't possible. The hospitals are also seeing more people for general medical problems.
"We're also coming up with alternative ways to use gowns so that we don't run out of those and we still have gowns available," Caro said.
UF Health hospitals are only allowing visitors who are necessary to help a patient. Baptist Health's new visitation policies start Friday.
"In short, the PPE issue is still a real one, is still a concern," Caro said. "We have a lot of issues as does the nation and this comes down to what do we have in the country and what do we have available for everybody and everybody would love to have more."
Caro says no donations will be turned away, like these homemade masks. A team will see how protective donated PPE is and use it accordingly.
You can view the number of ICU beds available in hospitals here. It does not differentiate which beds are for COVID-19 patients.
UF Health's Media Relations Specialist Dan Leveton says he does not know why the database states UF Health has 70 beds at the first location listed. He says they have 100 ICU beds on 8th Street and 24 ICU beds at the north campus.
Florida is still not reporting the number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus.